Obsidian Potency 3.0
Imus and Hip-Hop: The Fraudulent Connection
posted Tuesday, 17 April 2007
This is most likely the last thing I'll write on the subject. I felt compelled to post this excellent editorial debunking the notion that former radio host Don Imus' slander of the Rutgers basketball team has any connection to the way women are referred to in hip-hop music. Some choice quotes:
"Yet Imus and hip-hop really don't have much in common. Imus was host of a radio show that focused on the real news of the day, while hip-hop is a fictionalized form of cultural expression...So we should be judging hip-hop the same way we judge a novel, a movie, or a television show, and to do so means we have to afford hip-hop the same latitude we afford any other form of artistic expression."
"While neither of these extremes is ultimately relevant, extremes often draw the most attention. This means that those who feel there is no racism and those who feel everything is racist tend to get all the airtime, while the thoughtful and logical tend to get short shrift."
"To say that hip-hop has received a free pass on its language and sexual politics is simply uninformed and ignores the ongoing heated debate that has been raging for some time now on hip-hop's societal impact. I mean, who hasn't heard about Bill Cosby's senile rants against hip-hop the past few years? Critics of hip-hop are a dime a dozen these days."
"Ultimately, the fact that rappers are now being held accountable for something Imus said shows the bias many people have against hip-hop culture. Hip-hop is often the scapegoat of everything gone wrong in America, but hip-hop didn't slander the Rutgers women's basketball team, Don Imus did, so let's stay on point here."
Boyd also asks a similar question that I did: you don't see this kind of reaction when, say, a black person slurs Italians. Nobody diverts the issue to whether or not shows like The Sopranos "gets away with" slurring Italians, and whether or not the black person is simply picking up cues from the Italian media stereotypes we surround ourselves with. People may assert that James Gandolfini is hurting Italian-Americans -- but not because of something some random white guy said.
The vast majority of people seem to understand that it's different when Tony Soprano says certain things than if Al Sharpton were to say the same things about Italians. Why do so many people have so much trouble accepting this same distinction with a form of (mostly-)black music?
In my opinion, this goes to a simple, deep-seated popular bias against hip-hop. I'm guessing that those who have chosen to persecute hip-hop hold the same behind-the-times belief: that hip-hop is more of a commodity than it is an art fom. Critics like Michelle Malkin probably haven't bothered to explore hip-hop beyond what they hear on the radio and see in the Top 40 today. To them, it's all a bunch of noise - the same way rock-n-roll was considered to be a bunch of sinful noise back in the day.
It's time these people faced the facts: hip-hop's troubling imagery aside, you are now officially as obsolete as your parents were to you when you were growing up.
"Yet Imus and hip-hop really don't have much in common. Imus was host of a radio show that focused on the real news of the day, while hip-hop is a fictionalized form of cultural expression...So we should be judging hip-hop the same way we judge a novel, a movie, or a television show, and to do so means we have to afford hip-hop the same latitude we afford any other form of artistic expression."
"While neither of these extremes is ultimately relevant, extremes often draw the most attention. This means that those who feel there is no racism and those who feel everything is racist tend to get all the airtime, while the thoughtful and logical tend to get short shrift."
"To say that hip-hop has received a free pass on its language and sexual politics is simply uninformed and ignores the ongoing heated debate that has been raging for some time now on hip-hop's societal impact. I mean, who hasn't heard about Bill Cosby's senile rants against hip-hop the past few years? Critics of hip-hop are a dime a dozen these days."
"Ultimately, the fact that rappers are now being held accountable for something Imus said shows the bias many people have against hip-hop culture. Hip-hop is often the scapegoat of everything gone wrong in America, but hip-hop didn't slander the Rutgers women's basketball team, Don Imus did, so let's stay on point here."
Boyd also asks a similar question that I did: you don't see this kind of reaction when, say, a black person slurs Italians. Nobody diverts the issue to whether or not shows like The Sopranos "gets away with" slurring Italians, and whether or not the black person is simply picking up cues from the Italian media stereotypes we surround ourselves with. People may assert that James Gandolfini is hurting Italian-Americans -- but not because of something some random white guy said.
The vast majority of people seem to understand that it's different when Tony Soprano says certain things than if Al Sharpton were to say the same things about Italians. Why do so many people have so much trouble accepting this same distinction with a form of (mostly-)black music?
In my opinion, this goes to a simple, deep-seated popular bias against hip-hop. I'm guessing that those who have chosen to persecute hip-hop hold the same behind-the-times belief: that hip-hop is more of a commodity than it is an art fom. Critics like Michelle Malkin probably haven't bothered to explore hip-hop beyond what they hear on the radio and see in the Top 40 today. To them, it's all a bunch of noise - the same way rock-n-roll was considered to be a bunch of sinful noise back in the day.
It's time these people faced the facts: hip-hop's troubling imagery aside, you are now officially as obsolete as your parents were to you when you were growing up.
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